Chapter 7 - The Thirty-Second Countdown
The high-pitched wail of the digital alarm pierced the air inside the garage, vibrating in the small space with an agonizing frequency. The red LED light blinking rapidly on the motorcycle’s fuel tank cast a frantic, pulsating glow across the walls.
“Move! Run!” Jax shouted, grabbing Leo by the waist and hoisting the terrified boy up into his arms while lunging toward the side door.
Sarah was right behind them, but the man in the suit didn't move an inch. He stood blocking the exit, his hand still resting casually inside his jacket, watching them with cold amusement.
“I told you, Mr. Miller, you don't walk away from this,” the man said smoothly, refusing to budge.
Without breaking stride, Jax lowered his shoulder and slammed directly into the intruder with the full momentum of his massive frame. The man grunted in surprise, crashing hard against the rotting wooden doorframe and tumbling out into the gravel driveway.
“Get to the car, Sarah! Go!” Jax yelled, tossing Leo gently toward his mother, who caught the boy and scrambled desperately toward her sedan parked fifty feet away.
Jax spun around, eyeing the motorcycle. The digital timer on the tank clicked down rapidly: 0:18... 0:17...
He couldn't leave the vintage bike behind—not just because it was a tangible piece of his lost brother, but because the heavy metal chassis held something else. As the alarm shrieked, a small hidden compartment beneath the license plate popped open automatically from the electronic signal, revealing a heavy brass key and a handwritten laminated card.
Jax dropped to his knees, ignoring the danger, and snatched the key and card just as the countdown hit ten seconds.
“Jax! Hurry up!” Sarah screamed from the driver's seat of her car, the engine revving wildly as Leo cried in the back.
Jax sprinted out of the garage, diving headfirst onto the gravel just as a muffled boom echoed from within the structure. A thick plume of black smoke billowed out of the open doorway, followed by the intense crackle of flames consuming the wooden interior.
The man in the suit scrambled to his feet across the driveway, coughing from the smoke, but he wasn't looking at the fire. He was staring past Jax, watching something approaching down the narrow country road.
Jax pushed himself up from the dirt, wiping soot from his forehead, and turned to see a battered old pickup truck roaring up the drive, its headlights blazing.
The driver’s side door swung open before the truck had even come to a full stop, and a man with short dark hair, a familiar goatee, and a rugged leather jacket stepped out into the daylight.
It was Mark.
He looked older, weathered by a decade of hiding, but his hazel eyes—the exact same eyes as Leo’s—were locked entirely on his terrified son sitting in Sarah's car.
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“Stay back!” Mark yelled directly at the man in the suit, leveling a heavy-caliber hunting rifle straight at the intruder’s chest. “The game is over.”
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